Suffolk Building Society Conveyancing Panel Information

Unlike the CML the Building Society Mortgage Instructions deal with this. Section A.12 states ‘In order to act on our behalf your firm or company must be a member of our conveyancing panel provided we are a society that operates one – see specific requirements for details of our arrangements. The Special Requirements state:

You must also comply with the terms and conditions of your Suffolk Building Society solicitor panel appointment.

No such training is arranged by the BSA but they do organise a number of general conveyancing related conferences which are attended by firms on the Suffolk Building Society conveyancing panel. Lexsure intend to run specific lender focused seminars in the near future including a webinar on Suffolk Building Society’s obligations . Practitioners on the Suffolk Building Society conveyancing panel are welcome . Further details will be communicated as part of the LENDERmonitor change Notifications .

We are not aware of any plans on the part of the BSA to develop such a search facility .

The requirements to join the Suffolk Building Society conveyancing panel is likely to be fairly detailed and is unlikely to include signing up to LENDERmonitor alerts.

The answer to this question really depends on the reason that your firm has been removed off the Suffolk Building Society conveyancing panel. The top 3 reasons are as follows:

1. lack of transactions
2. the lawyer is a sole practitioner
3. as part of the HSBC panel reduction.

In these three circumstances it is unlikely that you would expected to take any action. Disclosure and other compliance considerations are more likely to be relevant if the reason for removal is due to breaches of lender requirements or allegations of fraud or negligence. Whether the reasoning should trigger a disclosable 'material' breach will depend on the firm and the circumstances around possible failures to comply with the SRA Authorisation Rules, and the SRA will judge each case on its own merits. Factors such as the detriment or risk of detriment to clients, the scale of the issue and overall impact on the firm will need to be considered in deciding whether a failure is 'material'. As the COLP you will need systems to identify patterns of breaches. Even if you don't consider there to be regulatory implications, the firms COFA needs to consider whether he or she needs to take any action as result of being removed from the conveyancing panel of Suffolk Building Society.

With banks and conveyancing firms working so closely together it is surprising that there has not been greater demand for the introduction of a bit of transparency regarding not just the figures for the Suffolk Building Society conveyancing panel but for all mortgage panel listings

BSA lenders do not come within the top 20 lenders in terms of frequency of questions. The most popular lender panels in terms of questions are as follows:

• Santander Conveyancing Panel
• National Westminster Bank Conveyancing Panel
• Royal Bank of Scotland Conveyancing Panel
• HSBC Conveyancing Panel
• Lloyds Conveyancing Panel